5 ms·

I'm wondering if the release of atom.io started a fire...nothing like a healthy dose of competition?

by zenocon 12y ago

sandstrom 12y ago
I've been thinking the same thing. As much as I like Chocolat, Sublime, etc. I think atom will trample them.
- _zen 12y ago
  We're still years away from HTML5 applications reaching the performance of native desktop applications. Atom.io is too slow for most Sublime users, especially on hardware that is not bleeding-edge.
  - seth1010 12y ago
    My 5 year old macbook pro handles the development version of jquery (10,309 loc) with syntax highlighting just fine. It can be (a bit) janky when scrolling through the whole thing, but it's not very noticeable. Local edits / search are as fast as vim.
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  I'm not really sure why it would. I've been using it on and off since the initial release. I'm not particularly impressed by it so far; in particular, the performance relative to ST3 is absolutely appalling in every respect. It's still in development, I understand - but one of the key awesome things about ST3 is how amazing, earth-shatteringly fast it is. What I'd like more than Atom would be an evolved version of Sublime. There's still a little bit of cruft in there from what I can see - while I've never developed a plugin, I've heard it's a bit tricky. I'd love something with proper support for things like SublimeREPL more extensive capabilities for previewing documents, and perhaps better ways to theme and write plugins using alternative languages. I'm not totally convinced that Github are going to be able to make Atom a compelling offering on the whole.
valarauca1 12y ago
Any Code based text editor already has a ton of competition from IDEs, Command Line Editors, not to mention similar products.
- munchor 12y ago
  Exactly. Atom is a few months of age, Sublime a few years, but Emacs and Vim are both around 30 years old. That's 30 years of work on the core editor, as well as packages and documentation. Plus, they're FOSS meaning thousands of people have worked on them from all over the world. This makes it really hard for new proprietary editors like Atom or Sublime Text to just come along and be better than these existing monsters. Personally, none of them has what it takes for me but I see reasons to believe they can stand a chance in the near future.
  - jbrooksuk 12y ago
    I believe that Atom has been around for quite some time, but it's been internal at GitHub, so it's had time to evolve too.
    - valarauca1 12y ago
      2-3 years in an internal organization does not even REMOTELY compare to 20-30 years in the active open source ecosystem like Vi/Vim and Emacs have had.
adamors 12y ago
Did it really start a fire? I hardly hear about it, and I frequent a lot of coding communities, both online and IRL.
- taylorlapeyre 12y ago
  I subscribe to the new atom packages feed, and I am constantly getting posts about new packages. Sometimes over 15 new packages in a single day, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. Yeah, I'd say that it's picking up some steam.
ternaryoperator 12y ago
I think that's a vialbe theory only when atom.io ships on Windows and Linux. Without that, I'd be surprised if it represents much competition to ST...yet.
wldlyinaccurate 12y ago
The major thing that ST has over Atom is that it's cross-platform. I develop on a Linux machine most of the time, so learning how to use Atom efficiently is completely out of the question for me until they bring out a Linux release.
- zachinglis 12y ago
  As Atom is a Node binary I suspect cross platform will be really easy when they have time. I suspect there'll be cross-platform issues they want to solve later than sooner and thus why keeping it single platform.
- holman 12y ago
  It's coming.
- coldtea 12y ago
  Well, it also fully works and its fast. Atom is a proof of concept at the moment. I don't even expect a "html5 based editor" getting prevalent.
misuba 12y ago
Has Light Table fallen off people's radar?
- coldtea 12y ago
  It was never on the people's radar on the first place. Mostly enthusiasts on HN, r/programming and the like. The vast masses of programming don't care for LightTable (or Clojure, it's core language).
archagon 12y ago
I thought Atom.io might be my new favorite editor... until I needed to open a multi-GB XML file. Sublime handled it without a sweat, and even started loading a different 38GB (!!) XML file concurrently with no issues. (I didn't wait for it to finish loading, however.) Atom.io, on the other hand, balked at a mere 2MB. I've heard that even vim isn't so good at enormous files, so kudos to Sublime for that!
- tomschlick 12y ago
  What special place in hell do you live in that opening a 38GB XML file is a thing? I hate opening 1mb xml files so 38GB sounds like a really fun time...
  - archagon 12y ago
    StackOverflow data dump. Thought I'd peek inside...

I'm wondering if the release of atom.io started a fire...nothing like a healthy dose of competition?

by zenocon 12y ago

I'm wondering if the release of atom.io started a fire...nothing like a healthy dose of competition?

sandstrom 12y ago

I've been thinking the same thing. As much as I like Chocolat, Sublime, etc. I think atom will trample them.

_zen 12y ago
We're still years away from HTML5 applications reaching the performance of native desktop applications. Atom.io is too slow for most Sublime users, especially on hardware that is not bleeding-edge.
- seth1010 12y ago
  My 5 year old macbook pro handles the development version of jquery (10,309 loc) with syntax highlighting just fine. It can be (a bit) janky when scrolling through the whole thing, but it's not very noticeable. Local edits / search are as fast as vim.
matthewmacleod 12y ago
I'm not really sure why it would. I've been using it on and off since the initial release. I'm not particularly impressed by it so far; in particular, the performance relative to ST3 is absolutely appalling in every respect. It's still in development, I understand - but one of the key awesome things about ST3 is how amazing, earth-shatteringly fast it is. What I'd like more than Atom would be an evolved version of Sublime. There's still a little bit of cruft in there from what I can see - while I've never developed a plugin, I've heard it's a bit tricky. I'd love something with proper support for things like SublimeREPL more extensive capabilities for previewing documents, and perhaps better ways to theme and write plugins using alternative languages. I'm not totally convinced that Github are going to be able to make Atom a compelling offering on the whole.

valarauca1 12y ago

Any Code based text editor already has a ton of competition from IDEs, Command Line Editors, not to mention similar products.

munchor 12y ago
Exactly. Atom is a few months of age, Sublime a few years, but Emacs and Vim are both around 30 years old. That's 30 years of work on the core editor, as well as packages and documentation. Plus, they're FOSS meaning thousands of people have worked on them from all over the world. This makes it really hard for new proprietary editors like Atom or Sublime Text to just come along and be better than these existing monsters. Personally, none of them has what it takes for me but I see reasons to believe they can stand a chance in the near future.
- jbrooksuk 12y ago
  I believe that Atom has been around for quite some time, but it's been internal at GitHub, so it's had time to evolve too.
  - valarauca1 12y ago
    2-3 years in an internal organization does not even REMOTELY compare to 20-30 years in the active open source ecosystem like Vi/Vim and Emacs have had.

adamors 12y ago

Did it really start a fire? I hardly hear about it, and I frequent a lot of coding communities, both online and IRL.

taylorlapeyre 12y ago
I subscribe to the new atom packages feed, and I am constantly getting posts about new packages. Sometimes over 15 new packages in a single day, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. Yeah, I'd say that it's picking up some steam.

ternaryoperator 12y ago

I think that's a vialbe theory only when atom.io ships on Windows and Linux. Without that, I'd be surprised if it represents much competition to ST...yet.

wldlyinaccurate 12y ago

The major thing that ST has over Atom is that it's cross-platform. I develop on a Linux machine most of the time, so learning how to use Atom efficiently is completely out of the question for me until they bring out a Linux release.

zachinglis 12y ago
As Atom is a Node binary I suspect cross platform will be really easy when they have time. I suspect there'll be cross-platform issues they want to solve later than sooner and thus why keeping it single platform.
holman 12y ago
It's coming.
coldtea 12y ago
Well, it also fully works and its fast. Atom is a proof of concept at the moment. I don't even expect a "html5 based editor" getting prevalent.

misuba 12y ago

Has Light Table fallen off people's radar?

coldtea 12y ago
It was never on the people's radar on the first place. Mostly enthusiasts on HN, r/programming and the like. The vast masses of programming don't care for LightTable (or Clojure, it's core language).

archagon 12y ago

I thought Atom.io might be my new favorite editor... until I needed to open a multi-GB XML file. Sublime handled it without a sweat, and even started loading a different 38GB (!!) XML file concurrently with no issues. (I didn't wait for it to finish loading, however.) Atom.io, on the other hand, balked at a mere 2MB. I've heard that even vim isn't so good at enormous files, so kudos to Sublime for that!

tomschlick 12y ago
What special place in hell do you live in that opening a 38GB XML file is a thing? I hate opening 1mb xml files so 38GB sounds like a really fun time...
- archagon 12y ago
  StackOverflow data dump. Thought I'd peek inside...